A whiskey lover's rum

Brugal 1888 is aged twice for a rum-whiskey hybrid of sorts

February 03, 2013|By Josh Noel, Tribune Newspapers

On a recent trip to the Dominican Republic, I tried as much rum as I could find and, as a whiskey drinker, was left bored. Even some of the recommended labels seemed thin and one-dimensional. But then, on my last night, I wandered into a hotel bar and started drinking the fancy stuff. Success.

One of those successes is available on shelves in the United States, and it's little wonder that it appealed to a dedicated whiskey lover.

Brugal 1888 is the company's first rum to be aged twice — first in white American oak, then in used sherry casks. The result is more than just a spirit distilled from molasses or sugar cane (Brugal uses molasses). It creates something close to a rum-whiskey hybrid.

At $50, Brugal 1888 is also one of the more expensive rums on American shelves, and a member of the growing premium rum market.

"The big challenge was using a different kind of wood," said Juan Campos, the company's brand development manager in the Americas.

Brugal 1888, named for the year the company was founded, is the same base spirit as Brugal's other rums. The difference is simply the wood where it is double-distilled and double-matured. As opposed to younger rums, all that exposure to wood lets 1888 take on multiple layers: vanilla, maple, molasses (of course) and light oak. Smooth and lacking the burn of many younger rums, 1888 is worth sipping as you would whiskey — neat, with a little water or an ice cube — even if it has a thicker body than most whiskeys.

Though Brugal had already been planning a premium rum, Campos said 1888 was in part a product of The Edrington Group, which owns several Scotch distilleries, becoming a majority shareholder of the previously family-owned company in 2008. The 1888 is aged in the same sherry casks used to age The Macallan, also an Edrington product.

"We call it the son of the marriage," Campos said. "It combines the heritage and knowledge of making rum with knowledge of the wood."